Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch told a fringe event that the party should give people “confidence” to have more children.
It comes just one day after she was slammed for suggesting maternity pay was “excessive” – only to later issue a clarification.
Badenoch made the eyebrow-raising remarks after a member of the crowd said to the Tory MP: “Our birth rates have been falling for 50 years and now it’s right down below 1.4. We’re nowhere near replacement.”
The attendee said women need to be encouraged to “grow a family”, so “what are you going to do to try and promote birth rates?”
Badenoch replied: “Someone else asked me this question a bit more bluntly and said, ‘how are you going to get people to have more sex?’
“I said, ‘this is not something politicians should be getting involved in.’”
After a small pause for laughs, she continued: “But the fundamental point is right. Birth rates are falling and we need to do what we can to support people to start families.”
Badenoch replied: “I think there are things we have to do to make sure that we make life comfortable for people who are starting families.
“Things like maternity pay are good, they are one example, making sure they have childcare – but also, housing.
“A lot of people are having fewer children because they start having children later, and so they just can’t have as many as perhaps they might have liked, or they feel they can’t afford children.
“I often think that too many people are worry about the money about than they need to be.
“We need to give people confidence.
“People are scared to have families. They are worried about whether they will have birth trauma, we’ve started scaring people about giving birth, they’re worried about what their bodies will look like afterwards, and we need to talk about families as the amazing things they are.
“Having a family is probably the most meaningful thing any of us can do.”
She said people should not act as though having a family is “an inconvenience”.
“We need to make sure we create a space where we can talk about these things without being pilloried as being Conservatives or without being told we want to send women to work back at home or stay in the kitchen,” Badenoch said. “There is a deep conversation to be had about families and about birth rates.”
And another fringe event at the conference also descended into a conversation about encouraging women to “breed for Britain”, according to Byline Times’ Adam Bienkov.